How to Recognize a Jerusalemite

Some people say we do it on purpose: that it's a way of showing off. That Jerusalemites - especially the women - dress like that so that anyone can see that the important thing is the brainpower, the commonsense, the education, the intellect. They say Jerusalem women dress that way so you can see that they don't give a fig for trivial things like clothes and jewellery. Personally, I don't have the vaguest idea how you dress "on purpose" to look intellectual.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is something in it. I know that when I have to go to Tel Aviv, even I dress up a little - how to put it? - la mode. At least I try. But it doesn't cut much ice with the Tel Avivis. I remember once going into the Kassit coffee bar in Tel Aviv, and as I sat down, some women I knew ambushed me and wanted to know why I looked like something the cat brought in. And I felt myself going red and starting to stammer. But before I could even begin to defend myself, the door opens and in walks another Jerusalemite. As he sees me, his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, and he lets out a yell: "Hey, what happened to you? Why are you so oisgepitzt?"* The fact is that the Tel Avivis really can pick us Jerusalemites out. When I myself was a Tel Avivi and joined the Palmah,** we came across people from all over the country, and of course, lots and lots of Jerusalemites among them. I could also spot them pronto and from a distance of a kilometre at least. But I can tell you exactly why. Because they actually polished their shoes and tucked their shirts inside their trousers! In general, they looked more tidy, more combed, more cultured. We fell over ourselves backwards not to look like that. So there we are, it was easy to spot them. But that was then; I'm damned if I can spot them today.

Aeons ago, before Israeli tourists flooded the world and we had to explain what "Israel" was because nobody had ever heard of us, back then in the fifties, I happened to be in England where I met a Catholic priest who was so bowled over by excitement at meeting someone from Jerusalem that he could barely breathe. His excitement was something I had never seen before, so in the end I asked him why was he so astonished, to which he answered that he couldn't believe his eyes! That it couldn't possibly be! That Jerusalemites actually look like that! "Like what!?" I demanded. And then he gives me a whole story about how in his whole life he has only longed for one thing: to visit Jerusalem, and how he is preparing himself for this goal. And then he described his collection; you know, people in biblical robes, in pictures from the old Bezalel School from the beginning of the century. It turns out he has already started accumulating clothes so he can put them on as soon as he gets to the Holy Land, and the first thing he'll do at the port is buy a donkey, so that, suitably dressed, he can travel the length and breadth of the Land!

I could see in his eyes a palpable fear as to what I was going to tell him next - that he should forget all that bunch of rubbish and that he shouldn't believe what some old painter painted a million years ago - but I simply said nothing and a sort of embarrassed silence fell. Then he said "So I understand that you are not really from Jerusalem, right?" And I said to him, "Yes, yes, you're right, I was actually born in Tel Aviv." "Aha!" he answered, in the tones of one from whose heart a large stone has just been lifted.

Maybe we should do something about it. Maybe for the sake of the tourists we really should dress up like those Bezalel pictures. Imagine the happiness we could bring to the world if we really looked different from all the other Israelis, and after all, we really are different, aren't we? Imagine it - hordes of tourists milling about the streets photographing us - and photographing characters from the Bible at the same time! It would surely increase tourism by leaps and bounds, to say nothing of the trade in biblical robes!

Translated by Asher Weill